Ducati Multistretta 1098S

[millemille]

Two years and too many thousands of pounds later, the tank is complete (other than leak testing, bead burnishing, scotch briting and lacquering). All done Thursday night...















Tank is now with the carbon fibre man for him to make the tank protector pieces and then once he's made the moulds it'll come back and do the leak test and then hand it over for prep and lacquer.

Picking up the engine Thursday and get on with building the rolling chassis.

[weeksy]

How long we looking at until complete?

[millemille]

How long we looking at until complete?

I'd like to be on the road, fully painted and buttoned up, some time in October.

Engine running late September then dyno time at BSD - both to run in the new pistons/rings - and mapping the ECU to suit the different airbox/injectors/exhaust.

[weeksy]

How long we looking at until complete?

I'd like to be on the road, fully painted and buttoned up, some time in October.

Engine running late September then dyno time at BSD - both to run in the new pistons/rings - and mapping the ECU to suit the different airbox/injectors/exhaust.

Good luck! I want a full report with beers and smiles

[MingtheMerciless]

How long we looking at until complete?

I'd like to be on the road, fully painted and buttoned up, some time in October.

Engine running late September then dyno time at BSD - both to run in the new pistons/rings - and mapping the ECU to suit the different airbox/injectors/exhaust.

You notice he hasn't mentioned what year..........

[Couchy]

Don’t pressure test the tank with too much pressure........who’s doing your exhaust the bloke near us is good and cheap

[millemille]

Don’t pressure test the tank with too much pressure........who’s doing your exhaust the bloke near us is good and cheap

Not pressure testing the tank for leaks, filling it with brake cleaner and using dye pen discoloser to check for leaks.

Exhaust was done ages ago, used JAC in Nottingham. If the dyno results show the rear cylinder header and collector are holding the engine back I may give racefit a visit...

[millemille]

Slow and steady on the build, the gold Ohlins looks sooooper against the red frame...



...had all the brackets, old and new, powder coated black and they look totes amaze.

Picking up the engine and swingarm (new bearings) from Nelly in the morning. The shock isn't done yet, it's taking an age for Ohlins to come up with a new hose for the remote preload adjuster, so I can't get it on its wheels just yet.

Had a parcel from Matt Bennett (kannerdog1x1 on PBmagforum) waiting for me when I got it. He's fabricated a shroud to go over the fuel pump on the underside of the tank, as it sits - even with the hugger - right in the stream of clag thrown off the rear tyre. The original Multistrada one is no use as the 1098 pump is markedly different to it. There's a couple of tapped bosses welded into the tank bottom to secure the shroud..



...and Matt's done his usual, outstanding, job of making it...







...when I get the tank back from the c/f dude it'll get trimmed to suit, somewhere about the black pen lines sketched on the shroud at the moment.

[kendo57]

I keep looking at the tank unit , so much detail , its an amazing job .
Thanks for sharing.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Is it worth getting your carbon man to pull moulds for making a carbon tank in future?

I know carbon tanks don't have longevity compared to Aluminium but they'll still last a good few years, Once you've got the moulds you can make new tanks relatively cheaply, at least compared to the cost of fabricating a new tank!

I'd get the tank digitised now at the very least, before you drop something on it and dent it

[millemille]

Is it worth getting your carbon man to pull moulds for making a carbon tank in future?

I know carbon tanks don't have longevity compared to Aluminium but they'll still last a good few years, Once you've got the moulds you can make new tanks relatively cheaply, at least compared to the cost of fabricating a new tank!

That's a very optimistic estimate of how long a carbon tank will last for with modern, ethanol ridden, fuel. I spoke to several reputable composites company's and an composites engineer of my acquaintance who works at one of the F1 teams early on in the project to see if carbon fibre fuel tanks had moved on since I had experience of them in the early 2000's and not one of them was prepared to offer any kind of guarantee at all on a carbon fibre fuel tank, literally as soon as it leaves their door your on your own.

Ethanol is fucking horrible stuff. I was working for GSE Ducati in BSB when Elf, the control fuel supplier, upped the ethanol content slightly and it was rotting fuel lines in front of our eyes and the carbon tanks Ducati supplied on the F0 race bikes had to go in the bin and be replaced with ally.

And a set of moulds good enough to make a carbon tank from will cost as much to make as the aluminium tank has cost to make. So there's no economic sense in doing so...

I'd get the tank digitised now at the very least, before you drop something on it and dent it

Why? What repair process is going to be able to make use of that information?

If the tank gets damaged then I'll pull the buck made from the OEM tank out of storage and use that to form the replacement section and cut the damaged part out and the new piece can be welded in.

But the tank is made from 1050 aluminium which is very ductile to I'm confident a dent can be pulled out.

[Mr. Dazzle]

F1 teams won't offer you any info on fuel tanks simply because F1 teams don't have any experience of carbon fuel tanks. F1 uses flexible bladder "bag tanks" inside a carbon shell and has for years due to crash regs. That's why they don't have any experience to give you. I.e. the reluctance to offer info is simply cause they don't have any experience due to other reasons.

F1 teams do use composite oil tanks though, plus composite vessels that come into contact with the fuel.

It's not the ethanol that's the problem in forecourt fuel AFAIK, it's the water in the fuel (dissolved in the ethanol). CFRP absorbs water over time and changes it's properties. It's far from insurmountable though, Boeing 787s and Airbus A350s both use composite fuel tanks for 30 year life spans. Jet fuel is nothing fancy and contains all kinds of crap.

It's all a bit moot now of course, but I'd have gone with a composite tank personally. But then I trust composites cause they're my day job

As for digitizing....thats just my professional instinct shining though. There's nothing like having a master record of something. Then again I tend to think in terms of "how are we gonna make 100 of these?"

[Mr. Dazzle]

P.s. I don't disagree about the ethanol problem BTW. You just gotta get the right materials, sadly it's often hard to find out what they are!

We had a problem with fuel ethanol on some F1 engine pressure vessels we made back in 2016. In the end they (the team) told us that they knew the rubber in a certain road car pneumatic suspension system was suitable, so we ended up buying a brand new accumulator from the dealer, cutting it up and sending the bits for x-ray fluoroscopy to find out what they were!

[millemille]

F1 teams won't offer you any info on fuel tanks simply because F1 teams don't have any experience of carbon fuel tanks.

Where did I say I spoke to an F1 team?

I spoke to an acquaintance who is a composites engineer, who happens to work for an F1 team. He could just as easily work for Airbus or Fred Bloggs engineering, the pertinent point is that he is a professional composites engineer and he wouldn't go anywhere near composites for a fuel tank for a road vehicle.

Motorsport does indeed use composites for components that come into contact with fuel. But they also life components and replace them with monotonous regularity in the pursuit of a win and they don't leave the components permanently exposed to the fuel, a road vehicle's tank is in contact with fuel longer in 1 week than an F1 car's is for a whole season.

One option I had explored was cutting the bottom out of the OEM glass reinforced nylon tank and making an aluminium floor and bonding the two together. I spoke to Loctite Henkel about an adhesive that was ethanol proof to do the job. "Yes", they said, "we've got just the thing" and sent me the data sheets. It showed the adhesive's tensile strength was maintained up to 75 hours exposure to ethanol. "Ok" asks I "what happens after 75 hours?".

They had no idea. No one had ever wanted to use it for permanent exposure and that's the issue with a road tank, 178 hours exposure a week...

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yeah I think you've done the right thing with the data available...

I'd have just done it anyway to see what happens! It must be possible because it's already done in aerospace. But unsurprisingly Boeing aren't going to tell you what they use and even if they did you probably can't buy it.

[millemille]

Yeah I think you've done the right thing with the data available...

I'd have just done it anyway to see what happens! It must be possible because it's already done in aerospace. But unsurprisingly Boeing aren't going to tell you what they use and even if they did you probably can't buy it.

I'll bet you the aircraft fuel cells are bag lined.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Nope, at least not totally.

I know this to be the case cause I did a lot of the work on A350 fuel pipes, which are composite. The whole fuel system has carefully designed composite everything for electrical reasons. Conductive enough to prevent static build up but not so conductive as to be a lightning rod.

Composite pipes in composite tanks.

But yeah like I said....good luck actually buying that stuff!

[millemille]

Nope, at least not totally.

I know this to be the case cause I did a lot of the work on A350 fuel pipes, which are composite. The whole fuel system has carefully designed composite everything for electrical reasons. Conductive enough to prevent static build up but not so conductive as to be a lightning rod.

Composite pipes in composite tanks.

But yeah like I said....good luck actually buying that stuff!

The guy who's doing my carbon bits works at Easy Composites and he's making a composite tank for a show bike he's building. He's going to fill it with fuel only for the duration of riding/showing it and then empty the fuel out and wash it out. And that's using a system that the manufacturer says is safe for pump fuel.

Yeah. No.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Heat the petrol above 65° in a saucepan and boil all the ethanol out

[millemille]

Heat the petrol above 65° in a saucepan and boil all the ethanol out

Genius!